July 4 - Boise, Idaho - BBBB - Bike, Boat, Baseball, and Boom

We planned, as Patience put it so pithily, to celebrate the 4th of July with four Bs: Bicycling, Boating, Baseball, and Boom! After a leisurely breakfast Jake loaded our two bikes and two for them on a bike rack that fit into the towing attachment of the Jimmy, and we drove to a parking lot beside the Greenbelt bikeway on the east side of Boise. Saddling up, we rode into town, and although we started in a desert landscape with patches of brown grass and sagebrush, we soon entered a string of about five parks that meander through the town alongside the Boise River like the pearls on a woman's necklace.

In the middle of town, however, just after we passed the memorial to Anne Frank that we had walked through on the previous day, Jake's bike broke a spoke and his wheel warped, causing quite a wobbly ride. In fact, his bike was barely rideable and continuing meant risking the breaking of more spokes, so we turned back and rode quite slowly and carefully back to the parking lot. Although we did not traverse the entire length of the Greenbelt, I feel I can safely recommend the Volksbike event put on by the Boise club because it uses the Greenbelt for most of its distance and the parts along the river, at least, are quite pretty. People raft or tube down the Boise River right through town. That looked like fun and I would definitely like to try it as a Volksport event, but I was not sure "Volks tubing" would ever catch on as a sport!

We drove back to the house, put away the bicycles, and hooked up Jake's trailer with the speedboat so that we could try it out on the Lucky Peak Reservoir. Out at the reservoir, Jake launched the boat in a trice, but since we didn't arrive until early afternoon, it was nip and tuck finding a parking space for the truck and boat trailer. Once we had that problem solved, the big old Mercury outboard started right up and we headed up the reservoir with a cool spray coming in as we whipped across the water. I was again struck by contrast between the dark blue water and the dry brown hills surrounding it. It reminded me of our experiences at Lake Powell the previous year (see Wanderung 3) except that these hills had at least some dry brown grass and green-grayish sagebrush whereas the hillsides at Lake Powell were almost totally barren rock, sand, and dirt.

At the eastern fringe of the lake we found an empty landing dock and stopped there to assemble a towable innertube. Monika took the first turn being towed behind the boat as Jake went charging up and down our end of the lake. He had warned us to not wear anything we couldn't lose, but Monika forgot she was wearing sunglasses; she's so nearsighted that she never is without her glasses and it becomes second nature to have them on. If she had managed to stay on the tube, all would have probably been well but when she was pitched off she went under water for a bit and lost her sunglasses. Patience and Jake hauled her into the boat and returned to the dock, after which it was my turn.

Trying for a more stable position, I kind of sat Indian style in the middle of the tube with my feet jammed into the bottom, and when I was ready Jake let 'er rip. Wow, it really was "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride"! I went bouncing and sliding around in the wake, and sometimes it felt like I was even airborne for a brief moment. The spray was constantly spattering my face from straight ahead, just like it used to do when I rode my motorcycle while it was raining, and that was a blast from my past. I could also hear the roar of the outboard, sounding a little bit like my old Indian, and see the white foam of the wake hurtling back at me in a spreading "V". The water became surprisingly hard as we picked up speed, a fact that I suppose is known to all of you who water ski. But it still was an odd feeling to be bouncing across something that I thought should be soft but actually felt about as resilient as a thin layer of carpet on a concrete floor! All in all, it was quite an adrenaline charged experience.

I managed to stay in the tube for the entire ride until we got back to the dock, when I promptly capsized as I tried to back paddle the tube to the beach. That got sand everywhere, and it took me quite a while to wash it all out of my swimsuit. Patience got into the tube while I was getting the sand out and Jake pulled her out into the lake while I acted as "flag man" in the rear seat. That meant I had to signal if she fell off the tube, whereupon we would circle around to pick her up. But Patience stuck on the tube like a burr on a saddle blanket (the longer I was out west the more my metaphors seemed to have a western tinge to them), so I never had the chance to wave the flag and yell "Woman overboard!" that I longed to do.

Monika and I both wanted another ride, and Jake obliged. By then we were starting to run just a bit low on fuel so at the end we motored to the upper arm of the lake and then went racing down the length of the reservoir back to the dam. Jake was as quick pulling the boat out as he had been putting it in, which is to say less than 2 minutes total elapsed time, and we drove back to the house where Jake backed it into the side yard. Continuing the "B" theme of the day, Jake Broiled Basque Brats that we had for dinner with buns and several different salads. For those of you who may wish to try Basque Brats, we found that the big fat ones had more flavor than the cute little ones, so this is one case where bigger is really better!

After dinner it was time for Baseball, so we drove over to the Boise Hawk's stadium, more accurately a baseball field with expanded bleachers down the first base line and third base line, plus some fancier booth or "skybox" areas farther down the third base line. We had seats midway up the bleachers, but unlike the big baseball stadiums we were only about 100 feet from the third base line and could get a great view of all the action. Unfortunately, there wasn't a great deal of action during the game itself--the Hawks lost 3 to 1--but there was a lot of action between every inning. "Big John" would come out after every inning and sometimes in the middle of the inning to do something funny with a few of the fans. We saw couples racing on broomstick horses, a guy playing a supersized game of "Memory", beachballs being batted around the stands, and a kid racing around the bases among other things. So Big John kept us entertained until the next inning of the game would break out, and between that and the cold beers a good time was had by all, I think. The end of the game was celebrated by having all the kids who wanted to make a run around the bases, and after that ceremony it was time for Boom!

They turned off the stadium lights and turned on a quite spectacular display of fireworks. For about 30 minutes we saw nonstop waves of multiple burst rockets and fountains and things. Almost all the time I saw many explosions and starbursts and trails of sparkles all making beautiful patterns in the night sky. I usually have seen that type of multiple display only at the beginning and end of most low-budget fireworks displays and I was surprised.

Watching the display brought back memories of other 4th of July celebrations and my friends and family, of course. When I was a kid, the loud "booms" used to scare me so much I would cover my ears and hide my head! I also remember Laurie and Steve getting married in D.C. on the 4th of July, with all of us watching fireworks on the Mall start in the background just as they were starting the first dance of the reception. We also, of course had taken our boys to the Washington Mall to see the national fireworks on another 4th. After seeing the Boise fireworks, I thought that it compared rather favorably to the fireworks display on the Washington Mall. Curious, that, but maybe we had that impression partly because we were a lot closer to this display than you can ever be on the Mall in Washington, D.C.

But finally the sky went dark and it was time to go home. After Bicycling, Boating, Baseball, and Boom we were utterly Blitzed, so we just let Jake drive us back to the house and collapsed into bed for the night.